The Brief

In an elementary school library in Bell one recent morning, about a dozen parents and a few children clustered around long tables as a financial instructor flipped through PowerPoint charts, talking about budgeting.

“Here’s how to build your ideal budget …” began the instructor, Everardo Velasquez, in Spanish. “An ideal budget means that our dwelling cost will not be more than 35% of our income … transportation and car payments, not more than 20% … food, 20% …”

It was a financial literacy class put on for parents whose children attend the Magnolia Science Academy, one of a group of public charter schools located around Southern California, many located in largely Latino communities.

Staff here and on other Magnolia campuses brought in the workshops earlier this year, after noticing that as school and life returned to semi-normalcy following the worst of the pandemic, parents and students were mentioning money problems more than usual.

As he spoke in Bell recently, Velasquez, with the SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union, would get the occasional comment from a parent. At one point, a woman in the back raised her hand. She said her family was struggling “just to eat, let alone pay rent.”

As Velasquez sympathized, the woman went on: “Each day, it’s more difficult.”

After the class ended, a few of the moms stayed behind to chat. Teresa Mendoza, whose husband works as a gardener, talked about how as he lost work during the shutdown, the family began cutting corners.

“In place of meat, we bought seeds — rice, beans, lentils,” Mendoza said. “We ate more naturally.”

With their forced vegetarian diet, Mendoza joked, “We came out of the pandemic healthier!”

But not financially, she said. Her husband let customers who couldn’t afford his services slide on payments; she said people still owe him. And though he’s working full-time again, now they have inflation to contend with.

Left to right: Teresa Mendoza, Yuriana Santana, Santana's son Tristan Lopez, Gloria Rosales, and Imelda Lopez.

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Courtesy of Evelyn Aleman

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“For his work (truck), it used to cost him about $50 to fill his tank,” Mendoza said. “Now, it is costing double. So this is affecting us more than the epidemic — that is the truth.”

Another mom, Imelda Lopez, chimed in.

“This,” Lopez said wryly, ”is the epidemic, really.”

Feeling the post-pandemic pinch

The pinch of the current inflation crisis is universal, as food and gas prices grow prohibitive and rents soar. But it’s being felt deeply in Latino communities that were hit hard by the pandemic.

Latinos in California suffered not only the highest rates of COVID-19 infections and deaths, but a big financial hit as well.

According to the state Legislative Analyst’s Office, Latinos in California endured a disproportionate share of job losses during the pandemic: In 2020, Latino workers made up 38% of people employed in the state, but accounted for 50% of jobs lost. Service-related industries, in which Latino workers are heavily represented, especially struggled during the shutdown.

As life has returned to semi-normal in the post-pandemic economy, there’s been a ripple effect for these workers and their families, say experts who study California Latinos’ financial well-being.

“As we've come out of the pandemic, one marker that's always clear is that it's going to be more difficult for Latinos to bounce back,” said USC sociologist Mindy Romero.

In 2019, Romero reported on how in spite of a declining poverty rate and a growing Latino middle class in California, there remained challenges to upward mobility: uneven access to banking and credit, a persistent education gap, and a lack of generational wealth. Opportunities were especially limited for people lacking legal status.

Romero says all of these factors left Latinos in California especially vulnerable to a challenging economy — like the one consumers are experiencing now, as inflation soars.

‘Pushed back gains’

Complicating the financial hit of the pandemic for Latinos were the costs faced by those left healthy and working who had to help less-fortunate family members.

“People who were working all of a sudden were trying to provide for more than just who they might have been before the pandemic,” said Bill Maurer, director of UC Irvine’s Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion.

He said this caused even some not directly affected by illness or job loss to get behind financially. Maurer and other UCI researchers have been looking into the financial status of Latinos post-pandemic as part of a forthcoming study. Getting “back to normal” has proven elusive for people they’ve surveyed, he said.

“Getting back to work, the ‘getting back to normal,’ plus inflation … hit some of these families harder than others, because inflation was highest around things like food and gas, transportation, housing — and gobbling up much more of their wages than it had before,” Maurer said. “So it just compounded everything, and we've seen that kind of pattern continue.”

UCI has partnered in its research with Abrazar, a Westminster-based nonprofit that among other things provides culturally relevant financial education for Latinos in Orange County through a United Way program called SparkPoint OC. Abrazar CEO Mario Ortega said in the past, they’d focus more on short-term and long-term financial goals with people they served. He said he’s noticed a shift toward simple survival since the pandemic.

“It just really pushed back any gains that the community had made,” Ortega said. “It's so difficult for a family to try to focus on financial goals, short term or long term, when they're just trying to not get evicted, or trying to feed their family, or trying to be able to access health services.

“So the progress that we've made of trying to be able to move the family to look at short-term and long-term financial goals in a new way, it's become a lot harder when they're just trying to survive,” Ortega said.

Budget, budget, budget

Once behind, it is difficult to catch up, said USC’s Romero.

“When you get behind and you're already on the edge, it's really hard,” she said. “It almost feels like you have to win the lottery to catch up. And that's our economic system … the safety nets are incredibly minimal.”

Romero, Maurer and others believe broader financial reform is necessary to address wealth inequities for communities of color.

But there are at least small steps families can take to address debt, said Everardo Velasquez, the financial instructor with SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union.

“I know that we sort of have, in our mind, an idea of, how much money we're bringing in as a family and what expenses we have,” Valesquez told LAist afterward. “But when we want to start taking control of our finances to reach our financial goals, to pay down our debt, we want to have a better picture of what our cash flow looks like from month to month.”

Taking detailed stock of income, debt and expenses, and making a budget in writing, is a good start, Velasquez said. So is talking expenses through with family members in the household.

“Maybe conversations around money can be seen as a little taboo or, you know, we don't talk about it so much,” Velasquez said. “So kind of normalizing that, right?... It’s OK to talk about it. Let's get on the same page. Let's create a budget together.”

This should include examining bills together to distinguish wants from needs, he said, and lowering costs as needed to prioritize debts.

'How do I belt-tighten this?'

All that said, it’s hard to lower even necessary costs right now, said Bell mother Imelda Lopez.

“Sure, we can try to cut, we can eat something different,” Lopez said, “but transportation to work, rent — these are costs that you can’t let go of.”

Which prompts a frustrating question, she said: “How do I belt-tighten this?”

Magnolia school administrators obtained grant funding to help with a few related services for school families, including mental health and financial workshops.

Marlene Castañeda teaches Spanish at the Magnolia Science Academy in Bell.

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Courtesy of Evelyn Aleman

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Bell campus Spanish teacher Marlene Castañeda said the need for the financial classes became obvious as she and other teachers heard stories like these:

“Families that lost a grandparent, that they were counting on that Social Security check and now it's gone,” she said. “People that became very ill and now they cannot work and they're on disability. That is if they are legally documented, because if they are not, they are really on zero.”

As the school reached out, including with home visits, staffers learned of more families doubling up in a home or apartment to save money, she said, kids whose parents could not afford school supplies, and parents talking about limiting their grocery shopping.

“I don't remember seeing this before, before the pandemic,” Castañeda said. “Not to this extreme. So families are definitely struggling.”

Magnolia administrators say they plan to bring the financial literacy workshops back to Bell and other campuses next semester.

The federal financial aid process opened this past week for students applying to college for next year. But for many California students, a source of state financial help remains untapped.

In 2022, the state launched the California Kids Investment and Development Savings Program, also known as CalKIDS, and began creating investment accounts for more than 6 million children in the state to use for higher education.

Babies born on or after July 1, 2022, can get up to $175 in their accounts, while low-income public school students can claim up to $1500.

In Los Angeles County, about 1.1 million public school students are eligible for the accounts, but fewer than 20% of kids have claimed them, said Cassandra DiBenedetto, executive director of California’s ScholarShare Investment Board. The claim rate is even less for babies — about 11%.

“The money itself, it has a long trajectory. So you have these newborns, and there's not a sense of urgency among some parents; they know the account's there, it’s been created. Parents are busy,” DiBenedetto said.

There is no deadline to claim the money, which is already growing in the investment accounts. (You do have to use the money by age 26). But DiBenedetto says kids are more likely to see themselves as college-bound if they have it — and will be able to watch the account grow over time.

“ You talk to second-and third graders who are like, ‘I'm gonna go to UC Santa Barbara,’ ‘I'm gonna go to Cal Berkeley,’” she said.

The state is working with the Los Angeles Unified School District and other school districts to get students signed up.

The city’s top financial adviser is recommending that the Los Angeles City Council deny a police department request to procure 300 additional vehicles for the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics.

The report, submitted to the council Monday by City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo, found that the L.A. Police Department would have enough vehicles to temporarily expand its fleet during the Games without the additional cars.

LAPD officials had previously requested around $31 million, arguing the additional officers deployed for the Games will need additional vehicles for their police work.

But Szabo disagreed in his report, finding instead that the department would soon have a large enough fleet.

“Given the current available vehicles and new vehicle procurements which have already been funded, it is not recommended to authorize the procurement of any additional police vehicles for the 2028 Games deployment,” Szabo wrote.

An LAPD spokesperson declined to comment on the city administrative officer’s report. Previously, the department has emphasized that its request seeks only to temporarily expand its fleet, with plans to retire old vehicles after the Games.

The police department has offered different estimates of how many additional vehicles it will need to patrol the Olympics. Two months after the LAPD asked for an additional 300 vehicles, the department released another report estimating an even higher need: 576 police vehicles.

Either way, Szabo’s report found that more than 1,100 police vehicles not yet in use by the department were funded in the past three budget cycles. He said those should be sufficient for the Olympics.

When you sit down at Birria Pa La Cruda in El Sereno, you might be expecting one thing. What you'll leave talking about is something else entirely, and it's just as good.

Take the mushroom quesataco. It starts with a tortilla brushed with avocado oil and griddled until lightly crisp, then layered with a thin skirt of cheese and a smooth smear of refried red kidney beans. On top goes a heap of shimeji mushrooms braised in a house-made salsa verde, mild, nutty and savory with a bright finish.

It's a slight departure for chef Carlos Jaquez, who spent seven years building a reputation for the birria de res at his popular pop-up. Now, at his new brick-and-mortar just blocks from where he got his start, he's serving his much-loved birria alongside several vegetable-focused dishes — including this one.

You get the sense that Jaquez has been refining each one for years through his pop-up, his work as a private chef and his high-end dining background at Otium and Bestia.

Homegrown talent

Jaquez grew up in El Sereno and launched Birria Pa La Cruda (which means “for the hangover” in Spanish) as a Sunday pop-up in 2019. Over the years, he's drawn on everything from his family's cooking to his Indigenous roots, to the bounty of local produce, building a repertoire that showcases the full range of his influences. His new place, on Alhambra Road near Cal State L.A., is his chance to prove it.

Carlos Jaquez, chef and owner of Birria Pa La Cruda, draws on the El Sereno community where he grew up and a wide range of culinary influences.

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Eric Valle

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Courtesy Birria Pa La Cruda

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"I don't wanna just be the birria guy," Jaquez said. "If people know me for just the birria, then I'm sure that one day when I cook something else they'll be like, 'Wow, he can cook other stuff too.'"

The menu

The mushroom quesataco may be exquisite, but Jaquez's birria de res hardly takes a back seat. For example: the mulita. Two corn tortillas are dipped in spiced 12-hour braising liquid, and the beef he uses is cooked in a pot lined with charred blue agave leaves that Jaquez harvests from the El Sereno hills. The meat is piled on thick, then topped with cheese, resulting in a juicy, well-seasoned bite where all the flavors and textures meld together. It's a mouthful, but the mulita shows backbone, never falling apart bite after bite.

The sweet potato tamal, topped with date-almond mole and sesame seeds, served with red amaranth leaves and pickled vegetables.

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Eric Valle

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Courstesy Birria Pa La Cruda

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Where the birria is a constant, the tamal is expected to change with the seasons. Right now, it's sweet potato and organic yellow corn masa steamed in a banana leaf, then topped with a rich mole made from California-grown dates and almonds. It's entirely vegan, though Jaquez doesn't advertise it that way. It's served alongside pickled carrots and a small salad of amaranth leaves grown just outside the space and dressed in a confit garlic vinaigrette.

Amaranth was a staple for Indigenous peoples in Mexico long before the Spanish arrived. Jaquez, who attended Anahuacalmecac, an Indigenous-focused charter school in El Sereno where students learn Nahuatl from third grade through high school, wanted it on the plate.

"We were eating amaranth and tamales and maybe even combining them thousands and thousands of years ago," he said. "Serving that on a menu today is a reflection of the resilience of our roots."

California love

Jaquez believes the caliber of his cooking comes from using local ingredients, whether it’s tortillas and masa milled in Boyle Heights by Kernel of Truth or heirloom tomatoes from Valdivia Farms in Carlsbad.

Chef Carlos Jaquez's birria de res is braised for 8 to 12 hours before it's served.

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Eric Valle

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Courtesy Birria Pa La Cruda

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"Its uniqueness comes from the locality and the quality of the ingredients that we're afforded because we're in L.A. and California," he said.

So, is it a taqueria or a restaurant?

"I don't know," Jaquez said. "It's Birria Pa La Cruda."

California’s district attorneys and the state attorney general will now have the ability to sue individual businesses that they believe are engaging in anticompetitive conduct.

But for some of its biggest proponents, it’s a hollow victory.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed Assembly Bill 1776, known as the Compete Act, bringing an end to one of the most hard-fought political battles of the year. Unions and consumer rights groups supported the bill, but the state’s influential Chamber of Commerce fiercely opposed it and won several concessions to water it down.

Assemblymember Cecilia-Aguiar Curry, a powerful Davis Democrat, introduced the bill to modernize the century-old Cartwright Act, which regulates only anticompetitive conduct by two or more businesses. Many progressive Democrats, concerned about corporate consolidation of business in industries such as healthcare, ticket sales and retail, signed on as co-authors.

Newsom signed the bill along with six other small business-friendly bills on the constitutional deadline for signing legislation.

“We’re taking on predatory practices that drive up costs and shut entrepreneurs out — making sure California’s economy works for everyone, not just the biggest and best-connected,” he wrote in a release announcing his approval.

However, his signing message on AB 1776 was more circumspect.

“While I align myself with a stated goal of targeting anti-competitive conduct that harms consumers, workers, and businesses alike, we must be careful not to set the bar too low — dragging legitimate, superior business practices and products into the ambit of anti-competitive behavior,” he wrote.

He added that he expects judges and prosecutors to interpret and apply the law “in ways that penalize clear wrongdoing, without creating needless uncertainty.”

Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, a former sponsor of the bill, wrote in a post on X that Newsom’s signing message made Hepner pessimistic that the law would be effective.

“I foresee politicized antitrust litigation budgets, partisan allegations of weaponized enforcement, novel legal defenses that find new basis in the legislative history of this bill, and public officials caving to the concentrated private power that antitrust laws are supposed to put in check,” he wrote.

The group had helped craft the legislation for years, but changed its position when Aguiar-Curry removed a “private right of action” provision that would have allowed any individual or business to sue a company they allege is harming them through anticompetitive tactics.

Other supporters included the California Federation of Labor Unions and TechEquity Action, a progressive advocacy group that lobbies for regulation of the tech industry.

Labor Federation President Lorena Gonzalez said in a statement that the new law “gets us one step closer to building a more affordable economy for working people.”

The bill grew out of a three-year review by the California Law Revision Commission, which the Legislature had asked to study changes to the 1907 Cartwright Act.

The private right of action was one of the biggest sticking points for CalChamber, which argued it would “expose businesses of all sizes to a wave of frivolous lawsuits.” The group launched a multimillion-dollar ad campaign over the summer to push to weaken the proposed law. Tech companies such as Meta and Google also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby legislators on AB 1776 and other issues.

Although Aguiar-Curry said she was disappointed the private right of action was gutted in the last weeks of the legislative session, she pressed on, and lawmakers passed the bill in the last days.

“California now has stronger tools to protect our small businesses, workers, and consumers and to make sure our markets work for everyone,” she said in Wednesday’s release.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.